Virgin River by Richard S. Wheeler

place,” he said. “This isn’t a fitting place. It’s July, and the clay’s turned to cement.”
    â€œThis is where she died; this is where …” He let it hang, and gulped air.
    â€œYes, it is fitting,” Skye said.
    Victoria watched all this from a safe distance, and then approached.
    â€œMister Peacock? Would you listen to some old Crow woman?”
    Peacock nodded and wiped sweat from his brow. He had been indescribably wearied by only a few minutes of banging that spade into the unyielding earth.
    Victoria settled herself in the grass, which evoked curiosity in Peacock.
    â€œMy people, they do it another way,” she began. “When someone starts on the spirit road, they are on a long journey that takes them up through the stars where they walk on spirit moccasins.”
    Peacock could no longer stand. He settled in the grass beside her. Off a way, life in the camp seemed suspended, and faces were turned toward them.
    â€œWe put our dead ones up in a tree, on a scaffold we build. That’s our burial.”
    â€œWell, now, I can’t even think of that. I want a proper Christian burial, Missus Skye.”
    She seemed almost to ignore him. “We wrap them tight in a robe or a blanket along with their spirit things, their medicine
bundle, their bow and quiver, everything they need for their long journey. Then we lift them up, very gently, onto this platform we’ve lashed to a big tree, and sit beneath the tree awhile saying goodbye to the one whose name we must never speak again, for this person is on the spirit road.
    â€œSo we give this person not to the cold earth, but to the sun and the wind, the dews of night, the stars above, and the moon. We give this person to the blistering heat of summer, and the north winds of winter; to the rains of spring and fall, and the showers of summer, and the snows that settle over that robe and bury it in cold. So this person returns to the seasons, the air and wind, and sometime, long time maybe, these fall down and this person returns to dust, and becomes part of the earth again. Maybe this is good, eh?”
    They sat there in the breeze-tossed grass, there beside LaBonte Creek. He couldn’t say yes to this; he just couldn’t. It wasn’t the way he had lived and believed. And yet …
    He stood, slowly, his aching lungs recovered for the moment, and lumbered slowly toward the sagging wagon, found the axe, returned with it, eyed some cottonwood saplings, and began to hew one down.
    â€œYou rest, sir,” Mister Skye said, materializing at his side.
    â€œI must do this. I’ll let you do it in a minute. Or Mister Bright. The man is a genius with wood, you know. But let me cut this first sapling. It’s my task, this first one.”
    Peacock soon felled a slim sapling, and carefully limbed it, and it felt right to do that. Then he handed the axe to Skye and settled on the ground to watch.
    Swiftly Skye felled saplings while Victoria limbed them with her hatchet, and soon a platform grew in a majestic cottonwood whose limbs spread wide. Pole after pole was readied
and lashed into the platform, until at last an open-air casket, its bottom wooden, its top the leaves above and the dome of heaven over that, was readied.
    Peacock watched Victoria kneel beside the quiet body of Samantha, and realized the danger.
    â€œMadam, no, don’t risk your life,” he said. “I will prepare her.”
    She looked up at him. “I am safe. We believe that when the breath is gone, the sickness is no longer there. Is there anything you wish to send to the spirit land with her?”
    He thought of poor Samantha’s small possessions, and remembered Emma’s ring. Samantha’s mother had given her a thin silver ring. “Yes, I’ll get something for her to take with her.”
    He found Samantha’s little bundle in the cart, found the ring, and brought it. Victoria ran it through a